Abstract

This paper analyzes the stability of the control system of an Autonomous Guided Vehicle (AGV) using a central controller. The control commands are transmitted to an AGV over a Rayleigh fading channel causing potential packet drops. This paper analyzes the mutual dependencies of control system and mobile communication system. Among the important parameters considered are the sampling time of the discrete control system, the maximum tolerable outages for the control system, the AGV velocity, the number of users, as well as mobile communication channel conditions. It is shown that increasing the velocity of an AGV leads to a lower risk of instability due to the higher time-variance of the mobile channel. While this still is a 'sandbox' example, it shows the potential for a manifold co-optimization of control systems operated over imperfect mobile communication channels.